challenge to geeks - expaling h-atom support to the rest of the blogging masses

Ahhh here it is hump day again and my gray matter is turning and churning so why should I give anyone else respite? [she asked smiling wickedly].

This request can be interpreted in two ways. Firstly, it could be viewed as a challenge to our beloved WordPress geeks to get off their high camels and speak to us at the oasis (forum).

Secondly, it could be interpreted as a pathetic plea to educate those who have the inclination to learn.

Will you please be kind enough to explain *in plain English please* to us lowlings aka non-geeky blogging masses the following:
(1) what built in h-atom support is
(2) why it's a significant development
(3) what significant impacts it is likely to have on WordPress.

Thank you, in advance, for rising to the occasion ^^ O beloved ones. [she said sucking up big time because she really wants to know].

P>S> I hate it! I can't edit my spelling mistake in the title to this post ARRGGGHH! Great jumping J@#$% why didn't I take typing in school?

@andy
Love the quick turn around. I already read wikipedia stuff thanks. What strikes me that h-atom may be cutting edge. It may elimnate the need for atom and rss feeds or am I off in the ozones on that? And if I'm not then that means a reduction on the expense side of the ledger, right? If so that would be more than kewl. Gotta go BBQ is ready to eat. Be back soon. :)

It’s because it not only puts more of the power of publishing into the author’s hands, but it also removes the need to RSS or ATOM.

Let me say that again: because the Sandbox theme is marked up with hAtom in its HTML, there’s no need to supply an alternative link to RSS or ATOM because the page itself is able to be read by newsreaders.

Or, will be.

'will be' being the important part. it's part of the semantic web idea, meaning that eventually a computer will be able to actually understand and categorize information, rather than just finding keyword matches.

I have no effing clue what you guys are talking about. But ask me anything meaningless about Hollywood, I'LL KNOW IT! :) You know Carmen Electra's husband dumped her for Jenna Jameson? YES, this I know. But hAtoms I have no clue. I feel dumb. *sigh*

Have you ever looked at your Atom or RSS feeds on your blog? See how eveything is tagged to divide the title from the content, and so on?

What hAtom means is that the structural differences between the Atom feed and a regular page on your blog is less. hAtom essentially is adding extra info, with classes, to the markup.

So, this means that Technorati, for example, can just look at your regular blog page and get the same information it would from your Atom feed. The RSS or Atom feed is no longer necessary, because the same structure has been placed in the regular blog.

In the future, you may only need to "Subscribe to blog" and not "Subscribe to feed," if that makes sense.

However, like Andy said, that time is not yet upon us. It does mean, however, that hAtom is pretty cool.

YES, I do understand what's being addressed. And YES I did have it scoped out correctly. I'm betting over time that rss and atom links will become redundant and computers will actually be able to comprehend and sort information on any page. Holy guacamole - this is really hot stuff.
Thanks andy and thanks to the kamel too for bringing links to the oasis. As I keep reading and reading the baffling and over-lapping layers of information eventually small bright spots of comprehension shine through. I'm kicking myself that I did not start out on this cyber path years ago.
SIGH - there's so much to learn and I have no game plan - no syllabus. It's like wandering around in a library aimlessly and then just grabbing whatever book in whatever random order and in whatever foreign language and trying to make sense of it. %(
@nosy - I don't have a clue about who the people who are talking about are either.

Anything with the potential to eliminate RSS and Atom is fine by me. It makes no sense to me that every wordpress installation has to have half-a-dozen different types of feed just because a bunch of pointy-headed geeks are incapable of agreeing on a standard format. If we had a single standard, syndication would be mainstream by now.

Wank, I'd love it if blogs were published in such a way that parallel feeds were not needed. It can be done (XHTML, XSLT, Xetera...) but the techniques are too complex; they won't kill RSS. Remember that there are millions of non-blog data feeds out there and the amount of RSS plumbing we never see is staggering.